Our Wiley President

Rachel made my day, tonight.
She led off her show with an update about the torture and Obama’s statements that he would not prosecute the CIA operatives who “were just following orders.” Does that ring a bell? Remember Nuremberg?
But I digress.
Rachel actually brought us some good news.
Obama may SAY he doesn’t intend to go after the CIA agents. Rahm Emmanuel may go on This Week With George Stephanopoulos and say the White House has no plans to pursue the people who wrote the memos or the people who told the lawyers to find them some legal loopholes so they could play schoolyard bully with people who were tied up and tied down and couldn’t fight back.
Obama and Emmanuel can say whatever they want to say and they can say it till they turn blue. It makes no nevermind. It’s not their decision to make.

**sssshhhhhhhhh!** Don’t tell Obama, but it’s the Department of Justice that determines what laws were broken and who to prosecute and who not to prosecute.
xxx
So, do you want my take on all of this? Well, want it or not, you’re gonna get it. =)
1] Obama, unlike his predecessor, is a very smart man.
2] I’ll bet money he knows all about the separation of powers within our government. I betcha he knows full well he doesn’t get to decide what crimes were committed and what will be done about them.
3] I’ll also bet he knows politics well enough to know that nothing will get the supervisor of any department running up a full head of steam faster than somebody else daring to tread on his turf.
4] AND I’ll bet that this is one hell of a sticky wicket for Obama.
He was just about 11 years old when the news was All Watergate All The Time—so he probably didn’t pay a lot of attention while it was going on. But, I’m sure it was dissected in every civics and American history class he took in high school and college.
And he certainly knows that every Democratic President has had hell to pay ever since. Nixon/Watergate was the reason why Ken Starr spent 6 years and $40 million investigating Bill Clinton and finally had to settle for impeaching him for sleeping around. But he HAD to prove the old Republican talking point that, “Everybody does it.”

So, try this on for size:
Obama wants to prosecute. But he can’t SAY he wants to prosecute or he will bring down all kinds of hell on his head and the heads of every Democratic president who follows him for at least the next 40 years.

In fact, if he makes a point of saying he DOESN’T want to prosecute, he might get the Republicans to back off the constant attempts to find dirt in the backgrounds of every Democrat they come in contact with. [fwiw, Clinton wasn’t the first. They tried with Carter. They hounded Tom Eagleton off Mondale’s ticket. And, during his presidential campaign, they hunted for something, anything, on Gore. Not to mention the 'birth certificate' insanity that still haunts Obama himself—although he's smart enough to just ignore it.] It’s enough to convince any viable candidates that they can find lots better stuff to do with their time.

So, Obama, being the smart guy he is, just might have found a way out of the waters that were rising above his head:
By taking prosecution off the table, he steps on the Justice Department’s toes. And Eric Holder rises to the bait saying that HE hasn’t taken prosecution off the table by any means, thankyouverymuch.
Obama is forced to back down and apologize to Holder and his department. [He hasn’t done it yet, but—given the stink Holder is making—I’ll bet he does soon.]
Now, he’s on record as being against the prosecutions. He, and all the Dem presidents of the next half century, are off the hook.
And the prosecutions are more likely to move forward than they were before Obama stepped on Holder’s toes.
xxx
OK, yes, I’m reaching just a bit, here.
I WANT this nefarious scenario to be true. I want an excuse to vote for Obama four years from now.
Still, given the convoluted state of Washington, it COULD be true, couldn’t it?